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Off the rack: Ideas

Among the "25 skills every man should know" are these potentially ego-crushing challenges:

clean a bolt-action rifle

handle a torque wrench

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fix a dead electrical outlet

mix concrete

hook up an HDTV set (finally, a survival skill we can relate to).

Raise your hand if you're batting oh-for-five. (You're all invited over to watch a manly sporting event on a grainy, black and white Zenith.)

To be fair, the magazine's checklist also includes several abilities that don't leave the daunting impression they can only be performed by a 6' 6" guy named Duke: paddling a canoe, for example, or applying CPR.

In the meantime, you might want to keep this handy piece of advice in mind should you ever find yourself actually having to clean a bolt-action rifle:

It doesn't help when all your friends seem to have given birth to little angels who don't even know how to make a fist. "One said, `My son is like a Buddha – he just sits there and smiles,' says Chase (not her real name). `I wanted to chop her head off.'"

Some experts, such as Barry Lester, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, believe some colicky infants are "hypersensitive" to changes in their bodies (hunger) or their environment (being touched).

As for Chase, her twins finally outgrew their colic after six months.

"You just feel so helpless," she says now, "as helpless as the babies themselves."

ALLERGIC LIVING

Fall

Peanuts have already been banned in most public schools across Ontario. Now, sports teams are also heeding the call of allergy-sufferers.

"It is not happening everywhere and it is not happening often, but the risks associated with peanut allergies have professional sports teams pondering the place of peanuts in their concession lineups," writes Jeff Hale.

Baseball's Minnesota Twins and San Diego Padres have designated areas in their stadiums as peanut-free zones for some games.

The CFL's Edmonton Eskimos have gone even further: They've banned peanuts from Commonwealth Stadium, at a cost of "about $25,000 a season in lost concessions."

From the every silver lining has a cloud department: Quickly scaling the organizational ladder can mean a hard fall under the weight of an enlarged ego.

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith refers to it as "the success delusion."

"Although our self-confident delusions can help us achieve," he writes, "they also make it difficult for us to change."

Success can lead people to over-estimate their contributions to projects or over-commit themselves because they can't "say no to desirable opportunities."

All of which can lead to "the superstition trap," or "the belief that a specific activity that is followed by positive reinforcement is actually the cause of that positive reinforcement."

Getting out of it is even more difficult than climbing the rungs.

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